In the Jonah story, Jonah doesn’t like the task God assigned for him. He flees in a boat, and then a terrible storm comes up. The sailors draw lots (which is portrayed in the Bible as a reliable way of discovering the truth) and discover that Jonah is the problem, which Jonah admits. They throw cargo overboard but that’s not enough. The storm finally stops only when they throw Jonah over.

God caused the storm. The Bible even admits that God causes all evil:

I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, Jehovah, do all these things (Isaiah 45:7).

Is it not from the mouth of El Elyon that both calamities and good things come? (Lamentations 3:38)

This idea that disasters are caused by God continued in the medieval period. With the Black Death, which killed roughly half of Europe’s population from 1346–53, the Christian continent again thought that only God’s rage could explain the pandemic. The best way to protect oneself from this terrible disease was penitential activity such as public and bloody flagellation (see the painting above), pious commemoration of the dead, and persecution of those groups that God was probably angry at such as the poor, beggars, or minorities like Catalans or Jews.

Our approach to evil today

Things are different today, with modern science to tell us what causes storms and disease.

Or maybe not. When it suits them, some apologists and politicians will dismiss the science and fall back on superstition. Remember what Jerry Falwell said on Pat Robertson’s television show two days after the 9/11 attack:

The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way—all of them have tried to secularize America—I point the finger in their face and say, “You helped this happen.”

Remember Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005? God was obviously mad about something, but what was it? Maybe racism (Louis Farrakhan’s conclusion) or abortion (Pat Robertson) or America’s insufficient support for Israel (an Israeli rabbi). Or, of course, the gays.

Remember the 2010 Haiti earthquake that killed 300,000? It was the result of that pact they made with the devil. Just ask Pat Robertson—he’ll tell you.

Remember the 2013–15 Ebola epidemic in West Africa that killed over 10,000 people? Reverend Ron Baity of North Carolina said that God was furious about same-sex marriage:

If you think for one skinny minute, God is going to stand idly by and allow [same-sex marriage] to go forward without repercussions, you better back up and rethink this situation. . . . You think Ebola is bad now, just wait.

(For even more examples of everything that’s the gays’ fault, check out this list from The Advocate.)

Remember when Texas governor Rick Perry prayed for an end to the 2011 drought in Texas? A California State Assembly member in 2015 thought that God was similarly involved with her state’s severe drought, and she made clear what God was livid about this time: abortion.

Remember John Hagee’s groundless fulminating about the “Four Blood Moons”?

A little reason

Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson both backed away from their hysterical 9/11 slander. The first major rain after Rick Perry’s 3-day public Days of Prayer came six months later. And Hagee ignored the failure of his Four Blood Moons hysteria and launched off into flogging some other groundless catastrophe.

Do these Christians know their own Bible so poorly that they’ve forgotten this verse?

The prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die. (Deuteronomy 18:20)

(Maybe it’s not these Christian readers of tea leaves that have forgotten the Bible but their own timid followers who keep giving them attention and money.)

We know what causes hurricanes, lunar eclipses, disease, and droughts. We understand terrorism. We know that homosexuality is natural. God isn’t part of the equation. Pointing to God as the puppet master behind the world’s disasters is an empty claim. It’s like pointing to Halley’s Comet as the harbinger for the victory of William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

It’s hard to believe that it’s the twenty-first century, and Christian leaders still make these claims. Or that their fans accept the claims and then come back for more after they fail. And what does it say about their God that they can easily imagine that he’s behind all the natural evil in the world? What catastrophe could possibly happen that God’s followers wouldn’t bounce back and praise him for his fabulousness?

I can do little but suggest that that’s what our imperfect brains can do, that we’re all susceptible, and that we must be continuously on guard. And to offer this bit of insight from author and professor Kathryn Gin Lum:

This instinct [to fear an angry God] is also why conservative evangelicals care so deeply about same-sex marriage and abortion even though they don’t engage in those activities themselves. It’s why people who are anti-big-government want the government to intervene in affairs that don’t seem to have that much to do with their own lives. This is why some evangelicals take a laissez-faire view of the financial markets but a highly interventional view of the government’s role in policing others’ individual choices.

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 6/22/15.)

Image credit: Wikimedia, public domain

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And we’re back with yet more stupid arguments! I’m sure it’s a tossup whether there are more atheists here comparing this list against their own mental list or more Christians carefully taking notes on what to avoid.

Right?

This is a continuation of a list that begins here.

Stupid Argument #29: America is a Christian nation

Remember what the Founding Founders said: “All men . . . are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” The government back then wasn’t shy about declaring national days of thanksgiving or fasting. And look at their personal letters—they’re full of God references.

If you simply mean by “America is a Christian nation” that most Americans today are Christian, that’s true. But it’s obviously false to imagine Christianity as somehow part of the country’s governance.

That quote is from the Declaration of Independence, the document that also said, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from . . .” no, not God, but “the consent of the governed.” You’ll find deism there but not Christianity. But this is irrelevant. The Declaration of Independence doesn’t govern the United States, the Constitution does. And it’s one hundred percent secular. Indeed, it was the world’s first secular constitution, one of America’s greatest examples to the world.

The founding fathers could say whatever they wanted to in their letters. They could believe in God, pray to Jesus, or imagine getting strength from Christianity. None of that matters when an honest reading of the Constitution makes clear that America is defined to be secular, not Christian. If they had wanted explicit references to Yahweh or Jesus, they would have put them in. Reinterpreting history is popular among faux historians like David Barton, but the preferences of a gullible public aren’t the best guide to truth.

Stupid Argument #30: Atheists just had bad father figures

Psychology professor Paul Vitz makes a powerful case that the absence of a good father creates atheists. A poor relationship with one’s earthly father creates a poor relationship with the heavenly Father. Atheists are driven by psychology, not reason.

I analyze this in more detail, though it doesn’t deserve much. Vitz’s analysis is little more than cherry picking, with examples of famous Christians who had good fathers or father figures and atheists who had bad ones.

And, of course, you can find opposite examples. To take one, here’s what C. S. Lewis said about his father: “God forgive me, I thought Monday morning, when he went back to his work, the brightest jewel in the week.”

Imagine compiling the opposite list of atheists with good fathers and Christians with poor ones with the justification that Christians’ poor family life drew them to an (imaginary) celestial father to replace the flawed one they actually had. I’m sure Vitz would complain that it was a biased selection. And it would be, just like his own version.

Stupid Argument #31: Excusing Christian scandals

No one’s perfect. Don’t forget that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

No scandal with a Christian leader can be so great that they lose all of their flock. Consider rehabilitated televangelists like Jim Bakker (five years in prison for fraud), Peter Popoff (shown by James Randi to be using tricks to simulate miraculous knowledge), Ted Haggard (sex), and Jimmy Swaggart (sex). They’re all back preachin’ the Good News.

Or the scandals of pedophile priests and the Catholic leadership that hid and enabled their crimes.

Or the false prophecies of Harold Camping and Ronald Weinland (who both committed the sin of being precise and therefore testable) or Ray Comfort and John Hagee (whose baggy prophecies could fit just about any events).

If “don’t worry about that—they’re only human” applies when Christian leaders do bad things, why doesn’t it apply when they do good things? If God’s actions are visible through Christian leaders when you’re pleased with them, why not when you’re disappointed? Why would God not protect them from error—or if he did, why did he stop? Things are explained much better by dropping the God assumption.

Jonny Scaramanga of the “Leaving Fundamentalism” blog noted the double standard. Ex-addicts were quick to give Jesus the glory for their recovery. But “as soon as that televangelist fell from grace, it was all ‘Well, we all have a sin nature.’ Well, which one is it? Do we have a sin nature or are we transformed by the saving grace of the Holy Spirit?”

Continue on to part 10.

See the complete list of arguments here.

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 6/15/15.)

Image from NeilsPhotography, CC license

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